Working away

Christopher in his first attempts at marbling (early 1970) with just one receipe from a book by Lawrence Town Bookbinding by Hand with a section on marbling and many years later holding one of his papers for the publication of the April 1983 American Decorative Papermakers: The Work & Specimens of Twelve Craft Artists, Mattapoisett, Ma:Busyhaus.

Years of trial and error and many recipes for various sizes and experimenting with different colors eventually brought results of finally accomplishing beautiful papers, yet it always still was a struggle with the elements. We spent many years searching for information at book stores, libraries and museums and to find pictures of patterns in color was difficult unless it was an old used book with endpapers we couldn't afford. Today there are so many ways to get answers or ask teachers with the click of a mouse and I wonder what Chris would have thought about the development of the internet. He never had seen another marbler at work until his first lecture at Harvard in 1986, so many years of just working away at it alone. An amazing brief journey of perseverance wanting to accomplish beautiful papers. Below a photo from the front page of the Tribute book of 1991 where Chris is marbling a resist miniature painting for a lecture. The photos are by Muir Dawson except the top one by me. Below the photo is the dedication

"To all unknown artists and craftsmen of the World."

During the 2 1/2 years I worked on the book I had seen a Documentary at a museum that inspired me having seen beautiful work done centuries past but of course no individual artists were mentioned and I knew I wanted to dedicate the book to these people.